Nicolas Floc’h’s new photographic series focuses on Japan’s artificial reefs, submerged structures designed to promote the life and reproduction of marine species and increase resources for fishing.

Nicolas Floc’h conducts a whole research project on the colour of water, “Watercolors”. As oceanographer Hubert Loisel recalled in an interview with Nicolas Floc’h, the colour of the water makes it possible to determine the composition of the habitats and the type of phytoplankton present, which is vital for marine species and for all the species of the planet, and also plays an essential role in regulating the climate.

“The colour of water has always been used by birds and marine mammals to detect productive waters in which there is phytoplankton and which therefore contain fish ”(excerpt from an audio piece based on an interview with Hubert Loisel, 2017).

The exhibition is bathed in the colour of the water, thanks to a unique in situ installation of monochrome images of water columns, predominantly from the Seto Sea.

These hats designed by Nicolas Floc’h, called “coccolithophorhat” (global warming protection hat) using double-umbrella coccolites, are both a tribute to the ocean and a symbolic object of protection against climate warming.

Commonly known as "artificial reefs," these structures were developed in Japan from the seventeenth century onwards to cultivate the sea, an essential natural resource for the Japanese.

In a few years, these elements, often made of concrete, will be colonised by flora and fauna, transforming them into living sculptures/architectures.

While Nicolas Floc’h has been working on the seabed for around ten years, the artist has created this new black and white photographic series specifically for the Setouchi Triennial.

The "Productive Structures" series began in 2011. The choice of black and white allows Nicolas Floc’h to highlight the architectural and sculptural dimension of these artificial reefs.

In February-March 2019, Nicolas Floc’h presented for the first time in Paris, at the Galerie Maubert, an overview of his research carried out in the last decade on the seabed, through the exhibition “Récifs”.